2 CEOs for ONGC, IOC soon

October 20, 2005 16:22 IST

India's largest oil producer Oil and Natural Gas Corp and the country's largest firm Indian Oil Corp may get two chief executives each to manage their mammoth operations.

While ONGC currently has a chairman and managing director as the head, IOC has a chairman at the helm. The ministry of petroleum and natural gas is contemplating appointing a vice chairman each in the two firms so as to ease work pressure on the current chief executives, government sources said.

The move has its genesis in the recommendations of the advisory committee on synergy in energy, which had suggested structural changes in the upstream companies.

It had recommended that the managing director of ONGC Videsh Ltd, the overseas arm of ONGC, also hold charge as vice chairman of ONGC board, and ONGC have another chief executive for domestic operations to be designated as vice chairman and managing director. A similar arrangement had been recommended for IOC.

Petroleum secretary S C Tripathi, in his comments on the recommendations, said, "Since ONGC and IOC are extremely large entities with operations all over the country and abroad, we may accept the recommendation of having two chief executives both in ONGC and IOC, and for designating OVL managing director as vice chairman."

OVL managing director R S Butola looks after the company's overseas operations and reports to OVL chairman and ONGC chairman and managing director Subir Raha. In IOC, S Behuria is the chairman and there is no managing director or CEO in the company.

Sources said the committee had also suggested that the number of government nominated directors on the board of PSUs should not exceed three.

"We may also accept the recommendations of having up to three nominee directors on the board of ONGC and IOC and keeping government nominees up to two only in respect of other PSUs.

"The additional nominees of the government on boards of ONGC and IOC may be from the finance ministry and the department of public enterprises respectively. Accordingly, requests will be made to the DPE and finance ministry," Tripathi said in his comments on the recommendation.